The Sea-Wolf belongs in the honorific tradition of American sea fiction where the voyage motif became a means of exploring the meaning of life, as in Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast (1840), Edgar Allan Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838), and Herman Melville's Moby Dick (1851). The dominant subject is an intellectual conflict between a ship-wrecked literary figure, Humphrey Van Weyden, and the brutal captain of a seal-hunting schooner, Wolf Larsen, who rescues Van Weyden and puts him to menial work on the schooner. The central chapters focus on the gory details of seal-hunting, and the final section shows how far Van Weyden has learned seamanship as he restores The Ghost to sailing health and returns to port with the only woman passenger, another shipwrecked figure, to plight their troth. Paperback, 256pp.

A classic Dickensian tale of imprisonment, both literal and symbolic, the working title for the novel was Nobody's Fault. Draws intimately on the author's own personal experiences of the dreadful Marshalsea Debtor's Prison and is full of psychological insights combining fascinating historical and social detail and a masterful character portrayal. 740 value pages. Wordsworth paperback.

This is the first paperback edition to bring out in one volume Kate Chopin's extraordinary novel The Awakening (1899), along with the complete text of her two collections of short stories, Bayou Folk (1894) and A Night in Acadie (1897), and 12 uncollected tales. The Awakening is a strikingly modern, evocative story of self-discovery and female emancipation, set in the sensuous environment of Southern Louisiana, where the young Edna Pontellier reclaims her own individuality, refusing to be defined by her roles of wife and mother. Chopin's stories are brilliantly observed, compassionate and often humorous, alert to the foibles, weaknesses and small triumphs of her characters. Overshadowed by the relatively recent fame of The Awakening, they contain some of the best work of this remarkably original author. Paperback. 508pp.

Count Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) is best known for War and Peace and Anna Karenina, commonly regarded as amongst the greatest novels ever written. He also, however, wrote many masterly short stories, and this volume contains four of the longest and best in distinguished translations that have stood the test of time. In the early story 'Family Happiness', Tolstoy explores courtship and marriage from the point of view of a young wife. In 'The Kreutzer Sonata' he gives us a terrifying study of marital breakdown, in 'The Devil' a powerful depiction of the power of sexual temptation, and, in perhaps the finest of all, 'The Death of Ivan Ilyich', he portrays the long agony of a man gradually coming to terms with his own mortality. Paperback. 288pp.

'Young women who have no economic or political power must attend to the serious business of contriving material security'. Jane Austen's sardonic humour lays bare the stratagems, the hypocrisy and the poignancy inherent in the struggle of two very different sisters to achieve respectability. 'Sense and Sensibility' is a delightful comedy of manners in which the sisters Elinor and Marianne represent these two qualities. Elinor's character is one of Augustan detachment, while Marianne, a fervent disciple of the Romantic Age, learns to curb her passionate nature in the interests of survival. 272pp. Paperback.

Introduction and Notes by R.T. Jones, Honorary Fellow of the University of York. Although the shortest of George Eliot's novels, Silas Marner is one of her most admired and loved works. It tells the sad story of the unjustly exiled Silas Marner - a handloom linen weaver of Raveloe in the agricultural heartland of England - and how he is restored to life by the unlikely means of the orphan child Eppie. Silas Marner is a tender and moving tale of sin and repentance set in a vanished rural world and holds the reader's attention until the last page as Eppie's bonds of affection for Silas are put to the test. 176 page paperback.

Trollope's delightful novel recounts the fortunes of Doctor Thorne, an upright and principled country doctor, and his niece Mary. She falls in love with Frank Gresham, heir to the heavily mortgaged Greshambury estate, but he is constrained in his choices by the need to marry well so that he can restore the family fortunes. The vicissitudes of Mary and Frank's courtship are lovingly detailed with all the wit and satire that show Trollope at his finest. In this social comedy, full of snobbery, hypocrisy and self-seeking, we meet characters from the city and cathedral of Barchester, and are introduced to the grandiloquent de Courcy family, whose pretensions mark its members among the author's most felicitous creations, as well as the down-to-earth heiress Miss Dunstable and the deplorable Sir Roger Scatcherd. 512pp. Paperback.

In 1915, Lawrence's frank representation of sexuality in The Rainbow caused a furore and the novel was seized by the police and banned almost as soon as it was published. Today it is recognised as one of the classic English novels of the 20th century. The Rainbow is about three generations of the Brangwen family of Nottinghamshire from the 1840s to the early years of the twentieth century. Within this framework Lawrence’s essential concern is with the passional lives of his characters as he explores the pressures that determine their lives, using a religious symbolism in which the ‘rainbow’ of the title is his unifying motif. His primary focus is on the individual's struggle to growth and fulfilment within marriage and changing social circumstances, a process shown to grow more difficult through the generations. Young Ursula Brangwen, whose story is continued in Women in Love, is finally the central figure in Lawrence's anatomy of the confining structures of English social life and the impact of industrialisation and urbanisation on the human psyche. 432 page paperback.

A wild, passionate story of the intense and almost demonic love between Catherine Earnshaw and Heathcliff, a foundling adopted by Catherine's father. After Mr Earnshaw's death, Heathcliff is bullied and humiliated by Catherine's brother Hindley and wrongly believing that his love for Catherine is not reciprocated, leaves Wuthering Heights, only to return years later as a wealthy and polished man. He proceeds to exact a terrible revenge for his former miseries. The action of the story is chaotic and unremittingly violent, but the accomplished handling of a complex structure, the evocative descriptions of the lonely moorland setting and the poetic grandeur of vision combine to make this unique novel a masterpiece of English literature. Introduction and Notes by John S. Whitley, University of Sussex. 248 page paperback.

'To the Lighthouse' is the most autobiographical of Virginia Woolf's novels. It follows the Ramsey family as they visit their summer home in the Hebrides, on the Isle of Skye, over the course of a decade. The physical location and activities of the family members take a backseat to their internal thoughts and observations in this introspective and philosophical novel. The reader is given a peek inside the minds of Mr. and Mrs. Ramsey and their children as they grapple with loss, disappointment, resentment, and the passage of time. While the summer home and its nearby isolated lighthouse change little over the years, the Ramseys are deeply affected by war, death, and loneliness. While it touches on childhood and children's perceptions and desires, it is at its most trenchant when exploring adult relationships, marriage and the changing class-structure in the period spanning the Great War. 159pp. Paperback.